


quiet resolve

by demios



Category: Dark Souls (Video Games), Dark Souls III
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Genderfluid Character, Grief/Mourning, Vague character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:54:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24657169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demios/pseuds/demios
Summary: At the end of all things, the Ashen One makes a confession.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	quiet resolve

**Author's Note:**

> i am very bad at this game but (points at anri) i care you

The moon was silent and full when they departed from Irithyll.

The twisted, squirming soul of Aldrich now rested in their empty vessel and his cinders were a neat pile, barely-contained in their pack, hungry and burning even as they were smothered by his defeat. Something the Ashen One did not want to hold onto for long, if they could help it. With the god-devourer vanquished and the lingering warmth of victory in their breast, they intended to return to Firelink Shrine as soon as possible to appease its waiting thrones. 

They know they could easily invoke a homeward bone and return to the shrine upon the wind, but the sight of Anri across from them gives them cause for hesitation. The faint glow of the bonfire reflects off her dull armor, the Astoran knight unmoving from her spot as she stares into the drifting embers. Her voice held a tremolo of relief beneath its usual decorum when she thanked them, her hands tight around theirs as she pulled them back through the shadows of the snowy streets and ruins. Anri was more affable than most of the undead they had come across, but she still held herself with a careful, guarded distance. She always seemed to be carrying a weight they cannot begin to fathom, and did not share much of her past. The Ashen One doesn’t mind, not one for conversation themself and bereft of a past to even speak of. They simply take comfort in her presence as they share the pretense of respite.

In truth, the indulgence is unnecessary when they had their duty of lordseeker to see through. The vulnerability of not wanting to part too soon, to uphold the illusion of pretending they were not alone in this dying realm - things unkindled ash were not meant to cling to when they deserved little more than the honor of fetching stubborn lords. Companions proved transient and oft doomed when their worlds brushed in fleeting tangents, and the Ashen One was reluctant to upset the tenuous balance that allowed them to share this journey in the first place. So they began the trip back to Firelink Shrine on foot with Anri, unsure of how to say farewell. The moon watches this charade, indifferent as it hangs low in the sky.

But all things must come to an end, and better by their own hand than by fate’s cruel design. Anri grows fatigued with each frequent stop they make along the road; the Ashen One has an inkling of what is to follow when her idle chatter diminishes into premature sleep. Perhaps that is the reason they feel compelled to bespoil this unnatural softness between them, so that they may return to the cycle of toil and death.

They are glad they cannot see her face. It only takes a fraction of a second for the confession to sink into her ashen slurry of a mind, the visor of her helm fixed on them as her posture stiffens.

The serene air between them pivots on a harsh axis, although that seems to mostly be due to Anri’s form colliding with theirs from across the fire, knocking them to the ground. Uneven stone digs into their shoulders as they lie stunned on the frozen dirt, but before they can pick themselves up, Anri pins them down with the weight of her body. She unsheathes the sword at her hip, pressing the length of it against their throat as she leans over them.

_“Why?! Why did you kill him?!”_ She shrieks, a deluge of anguish pouring out of her voice. It echoes in the confines of her helm, bouncing off the ruins they had taken shelter beneath. The force of it surprises both of them - she thought she had long exhausted her spirit after the arduous task of slaying Aldrich, but hot fury cuts through the cold of the night, more potent than any ember as it surges through her corpse. “Answer me, or I’ll turn you into ash myself!” 

The Ashen One can only gasp like a fish plucked from water, twisting beneath her to remove the sharp blade from their neck. Anri does not take kindly to the attempt.

“Why Horace? What has he ever done to you?” Her thoughts are spinning, spiraling faster than she can articulate. _Why was this hideous truth hidden from her? Why did she have to bear this alone? Why, why, why?!_

Anri forgoes her blade in favor of throttling them in her grasp, her hands gripping their tattered cape. Her movements are vicious and bestial, yet unguided when she cannot fully see through the tears blurring her vision. Anger gives way to the grief she had been nursing; she feels as though she is rotting from the inside out, dripping with tears and liquefied, sloughing flesh. The Ashen One holds their silence through grit teeth, suppressing every honed instinct that screams at them to draw their weapon. They let Anri tug their collar forth and slam their head into the ground, their ears ringing in the aftermath. _“Why tell me this now?!”_

“I thought… it would be dangerous to tell you where we were still within the catacombs,” The Ashen One starts, their voice soft in contrast to her frenzied shouts. “I thought you might - _waver,_ if you knew Horace had been slain-”

“By _your_ hand!” She snarls. Anri digs her gauntlets into the skin of their neck, her fingers gooey and dark when they break their flesh. The Ashen One doesn’t flinch, weathering her strength even as their face contorts into a strained grimace.

“Aye,” They offer without resistance.

“You’re depraved! Taking souls from man and beast alike!” Anri’s hold tightens and the Ashen One is unsure if she means to crush their windpipe before they can respond. “Don’t you feel anything? He saw you as a friend!”

_“And I saw him as one as well!”_ They spit back, their neutral composure quickly dissolving at the accusation. “I had no choice - I wished there was another way, but when I found him, he… wasn’t himself.”

Anri’s grip slackens, her face taking on a stricken pallor from beneath her helm. “He… he had succumbed to his hollowing, hadn't he?” She asks weakly, her words hoarse. “Trapped in the dark of the lake, and without me to guide him, he… oh, _gods...”_

Anri’s weight doesn’t lift from their prone form, but she relaxes her hold, allowing their head to fall limply back onto the ground. The flicker of strength that emboldened her is snuffed out by grim understanding. The Ashen One dares to speak again, uncertain if she is yet lost to the throes of despair.

“You wanted to kill Aldrich, and I thought that was the best way to honor your and Horace’s duty.” They gaze up at the moon, not meeting her face. “I meant no harm in it; I planned to tell you once you carried it out. Truly.” 

Anri knew the truth, in the back of her mind - why she could only find Horace’s shield and weapon when he was nowhere in sight. But she labored to accept the possibility of his death, lest it undo her fragile resolve. She held tightly onto the belief that her infallible luck would guide him home as always, a sliver of hope that she clung to in her darkest hour even as the futility of her daunting journey gnawed at her. For if Horace had perished, that would mean she was completely and utterly alone again - a thought more unbearable than death itself-

“I’m sorry,” The Ashen One croaks out from beneath her, snapping her attention back to the matter at hand. “For my cowardice.” _And for such a rotten reward for being my stalwart companion._

As an Unkindled, worldly attachments meant little, and in a dying realm like Lothric, they meant even less. The Ashen One could have withheld this secret for the rest of their days leaving Anri none the wiser. Their own death could not break them when they remembered precious little of their life before rising from ash, but for those like Anri, they were the fine threads of sanity already fraying. 

They had been afraid in their apparent reticence. After finding Horace - someone who they shared the comfort of a bonfire with on more than one occasion - they were loath to stain their hands with the blood of yet another friend. They do not know if she could have carried on, or if she would have joined him in the depths of the catacombs. A cruel mercy, and selfish as well. A perfect representation of someone so foolish and human.

Anri wordlessly relinquishes her hold on their collar, rising to her feet. She picks up her discarded sword and turns her back to them to mask the way her hands are trembling.

“You should leave,” Anri warns them. “I don't know what I’ll do if you continue to stay.” She doesn’t know if she can trust them, or if she can trust herself when her mind swims like the churning deep of Aldrich’s promised rapture. 

The Ashen One grinds the frail bone in their hand into powder until they fade into the unending flurry of snow.

-

Anri was never good at being alone.

The only thing he has now is his luck, and even _that_ seems to have fled him. One could argue that he had been fortunate for the entirety of this journey - that he rose with Horace, that he hadn't been the one trapped in the depths of the Smouldering Lake, that the Ashen One hadn't shattered his resolve in the catacombs and plunged him into the depths of despair when he was so close to exacting his revenge on Aldrich.

Lucky that he had survived the clutches of the man-eater, leaving the rest of those children to perish and haunt him with their little ghosts. Horace has joined their ranks, except he haunts Anri even while he is awake. He sees him in clunky, looming shadows, hears him in a beast’s dying growl, finds the phantom of his gentle touch when the writhing souls beneath his thin skin squirm too close to the surface.

What use was luck if you could only save yourself, he wonders. Anri sits beside the ruins of another abandoned fortress, this time bereft of silent companions to regale. He cannot feel the warmth of the bonfire that flits and dances with errant embers at his feet, though he suspects he would find meager comfort in it.

He contemplates just how to mourn Horace again, when fragmented memories are all he has left. The way Anri the Unkindled remembers him is not the same way Anri the Astora remembered him. 

Anri of Astora remembers how, when he could not sleep for fear of the lurking dark, Horace would offer him the soft glow of prism stones to serve as a ward against what monsters would threaten to claim him. He remembers scraps of his voice, before his tongue was cut out by a priest, whispering reassurances as they trembled and huddled with the rest of the children in damp squalor, opulent tapestries and gold candles hanging overhead in an unmoving halo. He remembers reading to Horace about knights from foreign lands, their noble strength and valorous duties, and dreaming of how they could follow in their footsteps when they were far, far away from the Cathedral and its holy sacrifices.

Anri the Unkindled recalls the touch of a pinky wrapping around his own and wants to flinch away as if burnt. 

They did end up keeping that promise, in the end - they became knights, then Undead, then pitiful, scattered ash. Except Anri has found himself back in the unforgiving shadow of the Cathedral of the Deep despite his vow to never return. Without Horace at his side, the imposing spires are more sinister than he can bear, but it’s not the winding innards of sprawling stone that he seeks.

He knows the path by heart - or what is left of his, mind. From the chapel, through the dirt paths and overgrown grass, through the gnarled trees and up the scraggly hills. The Hollows barely acknowledge him when he picks his way through the grounds, too preoccupied by the endless worship that carried into their undeath.

Anri finds his way to a secluded clearing, sequestered away from the prying eyes of priests and every wretch begging for the absolution in their cleansing fires. Here, there are the smallest of graves with not enough headstones between them. Anri doesn’t have any offerings of homemade dolls or stolen sweets this time, and only bows his head. He refuses to let the faith of the Deep taint his lips, and instead comes up with small prayers of his own. They are clumsy, thick like coagulated blood on his tongue - and apologies, mostly. The burden is lessened with Aldrich reduced to cinders, yet Anri cannot help but feel this is not his place to ask forgiveness when he can hardly remember their names and faces outside of the formless nightmares. Still, he hopes that their wispy souls have found a semblance of peace, and were not trapped within the ashen vessel of a long-suffering lordseeker.

He turns his gaze towards the horizon. The sun wanes with the sky in a constant twilight. Enough time for another leg of travel before it truly becomes night, but just where did he mean to go? He had been walking across the land, vaguely in the direction of Firelink Shrine without actually meaning to return to the blessed asylum. The Ashen One had taken Aldrich’s cinders to his throne and Anri knew not what to do after their graceless separation.

Anri retreats far enough that the Cathedral is obscured by wood and any trace of it firmly hidden before taking shelter once more. He entrusts himself to sleep at the first opportunity, if only to keep the sense of being viscerally alone at bay. His dreams swirl about like the sludge in the pit of the Cathedral, slow and viscous and pungent to the point it sends his temples pounding. Each time he wakes, time seems to slip further away from his grasp - how long has it been? How many days had he been asleep, and how many had he spent wandering the barren land? There are no pilgrims left to guide him, the roads long empty save for aimlessly shambling undead guarding territories forgotten to them.

Once, the knowledge would have overtaken him with the untameable gnawings of panic and anxiety, but now there is naught save a pervasive numbness. Horace was dead. Aldrich was dead. His duty was fulfilled. There was no reason to prolong the return to unthinking, undreaming ash.

Vengeance had kept him tethered to reason, and part of him faintly wonders why it doesn’t still. The gods are uncaring of the knights scurrying about their feet; Anri knows this, and returns the sentiment in kind. It was never for the glorious inheritance of the flame that he took up his sword. His conviction was only bolstered by the promise of cutting down the demon from his childhood, the knight tenaciously holding onto the hot flickers of rage overpowered his fear like precious embers. 

He can no longer find the elusive sparks of reckless fury. Perhaps it is because he knows festering with resentment towards the Champion of Ash would be a fruitless endeavor. They were a good person, or as good of a person one can be in a world where death has little meaning. Or perhaps it is because he knows how such a desire consumes all, like a bottomless maw, fostering a void of dark as lightless as the deepest chamber of the Cathedral between his withered lungs.

And, above all, he is so, so tired.

Rest. He wishes to _rest._

-

In her fitful sleep, she finds a memory that neglected to surface until now, or perhaps a wishful fabrication of days long past. She doesn’t know which.

Flowers are scarce along the road, but Anri resolves to find enough for a scattered bouquet regardless. It’s nothing short of a miracle as she gathers them up and carefully stowes them in her pack. She follows sparse constellations of blossoming petals amid muck and decay, like prism stones laid out before her.

In another time, she would feel a bit guilty for plucking them from the dirt when they had so valiantly braved the curse-laden air to bring new life above the soil. But Anri supposes it doesn't matter either way, when the fire was fading regardless. The gods’ ancient machinations did not regard the insignificance of a blooming flower. Anri takes it upon herself to be the one to do so, if only for a little while.

The fruits of her labor bear a mismatched bushel of weeds and flowers, their colors offensively vivid amongst the drab gray of most everything else. Her heart stirs for a moment, dredging up a scene from wet, clumped ash - the sight of her fingers, free of steel and iron, stained green with twisting stems. The sound of laughter - strange to her ears, yet it could be what her voice sounded like before it became thin and mirthless. The blinding sunlight on a clear sky, two shadows chasing one other on the ground, a breeze that did not carry the heavy scent of rot and pestilence-

She cannot find Horace’s favorite here this far from home. These will have to do.

-

When Anri reaches the depths of the Smouldering Lake, he expects the singular prism stone he left to be the only source of light, already losing its twinkling luster. The murky water of the lake has receded some, enough that he doesn't have to mire his feet as he drags them to shore.

Instead, what he finds is a small pile of kindling, and another taking refuge in the putrid cavern.

“Were you waiting for me?” Anri asks, slightly louder than his usual greeting to attract their attention. 

The Ashen One’s head jerks up, their hand hesitantly twitching towards the hilt of their weapon without rising from their spot.

“I’m not going to attack you, if that's what you're worried about.” He says, holding both hands up in a placating gesture. Despite the unreadable expression of their helm, the Ashen One noticeably relaxes.

Anri strides past them to deliver his half-crushed bouquet, laying it next to the dimming prism stone. A shabby grave made by a shabby knight - Horace’s shield and halberd remain blessedly untouched, as a small consolation. There is less ceremony to it than he would have thought, when he cannot find the words to say. He had worn out all of his prayers and apologies long ago. He doesn't think Horace would mind the silence, though.

The Ashen One watches him all the while - he can feel their eyes on him, beseeching, yet they make no move to speak. No bid for forgiveness, nor the facade of pleasantries. Anri doesn't blame them, given the last time they met. He does not know a graceful way to say _Sorry for battering you against the ground and threatening to snuff out your precarious existence._ He tentatively shuffles next to where they are sitting and joins them by the fire.

It is a pitiful thing, nearly outshone by Anri’s prism stone offering. But there is a measure of familiarity in it - fires always signified safety and camaraderie between wandering souls, and here, Anri can pretend they are not merely awaiting the inevitable.

“If it was you, I can be certain he felt no pain.” Anri finally says.

The Ashen One’s head swivels towards him in surprised interest, no doubt staring beneath their visor. Anri smiles thinly in return. “I wanted to lay him to rest by my hand if it ever came to that. But perhaps it was better that you did, for I am unsure if I would have been able to… carry the deed through."

Anri’s hands are clasped together before him, and he focuses on the waning flames of the makeshift bonfire rather than the Ashen One’s hesitant movements to comfort him. Their gauntlet does not quite close the gap, withdrawing at the last moment. Anri faintly wonders if they would be warm to the touch. He turns towards them, meeting their gaze and startling them into stillness. 

“I won't lie; I want to be angry with you. I don't know if I am supposed to forgive you, or if I even _can_ forgive you, but I understand what had to be done.” He holds their gaze for an endless moment, then exhales a long sigh, tension fleeing his stiff limbs. His head throbs with a dull pain, but the sense of relief accompanying his own confession outweighs the burden of his decaying body. “Horace would thank you. He never wanted to hurt anyone, least of all me. And I suppose you spared him that.”

The Ashen One is silent, holding their breath. Anri continues, possessed by a sentimentality he finds hard to stifle.

“'Tis true we are accursed, but onerous as our duty may be, I saw the opportunity to rise from death as a blessing, in some way.” Perhaps it is strange of him to be speaking of blessings and curses when the meanings were blurred and muddled for him. He knew of the worst ways men of intimate faith could be godless, slaughtering for holy devotion and receiving coveted rites that would drive them mad from visions of the dark. Anri had renounced any semblance of faith because of it, but just this once, he wants to believe that the gods had delivered unto him a gentler fate. “I do not doubt that my desire to slay the maneater was the reason I rose from ash in the first place. And you've helped me see it though - you've done more than I could ever hope to repay you for. Thank you.”

But Anri can certainly try. He unclasps his sword from his hip, and proffers it towards them. “Keep my blade. May it serve you well.” He can no longer remember the battles it weathered, only that it fit snugly in his grip when he needed it most.

The Ashen One takes it in mute understanding. Anri feels weightless now, and content in a way he did not think possible in his lowly undeath. “I intend to join Horace anon. And I would offer up what strength I have left, if you would have me.”

“Of course.” The Ashen One softly replies, their voice slightly unsteady.

Anri leans against their shoulder, as if to sleep. The Ashen One doesn't feel like a person with blood on their hands, especially when they wrap an arm around his weary frame and hold him close. They stay like that for a while. It doesn’t hurt - at least, not in a way he can remember.

Ash seeketh embers, and he is no better as he lets the tempo of their heart resound through his ears. His soul finds solace in the Ashen One’s vessel. It is so very dark and quiet, yet Anri finds no fear in it. It isn’t the fathomless abyss Aldrich promised, but a sunless sea that gently carries him far from shore, until he is nothing once more.


End file.
